Video games and high difficulty levels are no strangers to one another. Early video games had no difficulty scaling, creative modes, or simplified environments. Finishing a game was meant to be an achievement. A lot of popular games today have taken a different approach to difficulty levels, offering easier modes for a more story driven experience and more difficult modes meant to challenge.
The main goal behind games getting easier is that everybody can enjoy the game, you don’t need to be skillful to be able to reach the conclusion of a story. This is overall a great move, allowing story-based narratives to be told and enjoyed by all. Then we get to a different breed of games, games that seem to be designed to punish us around every corner and push us to new levels to truly become adept at the game.
For clarity, difficulty is not a universal standard. A dark souls veteran may find simulation racing games extremely difficult from a sheer lack of experience. Difficulty is subjective, especially so to specific genres.
Dark Souls 3
When every other extremely challenging game is referred to as the Dark Souls of its specific genre, that should tell you more about Dark Souls than anything else. This blend of hack and slash mechanics with RPG elements creates a scenario where players cannot simply steam roll the game to arrive at a conclusion.
Simply attempting to hack your way through the bosses will result in dying repeatedly and a fair amount of frustration. The idea behind a game of this difficulty level was very intentional by developers From Software, promoting players to find their own ideal path to face a challenge and yet, come to the same level of accomplishment at the end. Dark Souls 3 is a hard game, there is no doubt about that, but when approached with a tactical mindset and smart levelling, it can be managed by virtually anybody who plays games.
Cuphead
Cuphead can best be described a modern-day shoot ‘em up style of platformer, while not actually a platform game, it does offer some of the same challenges and skill styles. The developers set out to design a game that would stay engaging, and action packed, the end result is a game that can be extremely difficult to somebody who is not used to the genre. A constant bombardment of incoming bullets and other threats needs to be met with precisely times dodges and return fire. One of the things that makes Cuphead so difficult is the pattern variance which is built into the game, making it impossible to memorize boss fighting or movement patterns, every attempt at a boss will be different in some way to the last.
Escape From Tarkov
Escape From Tarkov turns the difficulty up for the traditional first-person shooter genre. Unlike traditional first-person shooters, in Tarkov you have a sort of inventory system in which you collect items, similar to a survival game. The part that makes Tarkov punishing is the fact that when you die, you lose all the items on your body.
Guns, medication and armor are all at risk, giving you a constant balancing act of risk versus reward when taking on other players. Added to the idea of losing your precious gun is the general game design. Lead developer at Battlestate Games Nikita Buyanov put it best, the game is to be as realistic as playable. The learning curve is severe and difficult enough to make most non-FPS players consider outright quitting the game, but as in Dark Souls, there is reward in the accomplishment of overcoming a challenge.
Others
There are a million games out there – from the abovementioned to those at https://mobilecasino.my/real-money/ – and difficulty is subjective to the kind of player you are. Trying out a game in a new genre may provide more challenge than even the most difficult games in the genre you love.